willard on derrida

8/13/2019 Willard on Derrida

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Category: Philosophy

Unhinging of the American Mind--Derrida as Pretext (The)

This conference calls upon us to say something illuminating about the causes of the current condition of the university systcausation is a notoriously slippery topic. It is difficult to say anything with much confidence or even precision about it. Butunexamined. So I shall simply state what considerable hard thinking and experience has brought me to believe about the m

ON THE NATURE OF THE CRISIS

Almost everyone--left or right, up or down--who takes an interest in education agrees that the American university system ifinancially, or in the sense that it turns out multitudes of people who are uneducated. The heart of the university crisis is, ininstitutional structures and processes are no longer organized around knowledge. The life of knowledge is no longer their tknowing is not what is had in view or consciously supported by them. The people in charge are in fact only very rarely thin

the place "is about" in the mental processes of those who determine, or think they determine, curriculum, program and persor bad, and who is to be rewarded in various ways or not.

At the other end of university life, the Freshmen are not, on the whole, leaping with joyful anticipation at the prospect of lehunger and joy are not displacing social and athletic activities or TV watching in their heart. They have many other thingsthrough a process at the university which they believe, for often quite obscure reasons, to be necessary for their present orwell, for they are invariably faced with a set of choices, in progressing toward their degree, which have no substantive (consupposed to guarantee a certain "spread." (It is amazing the degree to which curriculum committees and administrators are

The absolute disarray of the undergraduate curriculum--outside of the major and pre-professional subsections at least, anddemonstrates that the university is not about knowledge. It is, of course, about granting degrees or certificates, but this is cunits, and has no necessary connection with the grantees becoming knowledge-able persons, which by and large they dutif

I am used to the reply that what I am describing has always been the case, that students and faculty have never been more snow, but that now they are just more honest, hence more virtuous. Here I can only say that such replies seem to me compleworld of higher education in the pre-World War I era, for example, and for some time thereafter. The mere words written oeven high school buildings then simply could not be written now. Imagine now writing on the walls of a new building at an"Let only the eager, thoughtful and reverent enter here." This is written on the entrance to Pomona College, one of the bettWritten when they were, these words are now excusable because quaint. Written now they would be a joke. Of course they

The point I have been making about knowledge cannot be stated by responsible university leaders, nor can it be happily rec Nevertheless, it makes its presence felt in various ways, and that frequently results in statements from university administr changed, e.g. as a result of computers, or the ethnic mix of populations, or the way research is arranged and funded, etc. etcgovernment of Quebec, for example, even took the quite reasonable step of asking Jean-Francois Lyotard to write a reportWestern world. There is a general recognition among higher-level administrators that something fundamental has changed.

Lyotard began his report with the statement--or "working hypothesis," as he calls it--that "the status of knowledge is altere postindustrial age and culture enters what is known as the postmodern age. " 1 To the surprise of no one, he reports thadiscourse"--a metaphysical truism of the late Twentieth Century which silently crouches at the heart of our situation--and hthe kind of social ferment that makes up the 'knowledge' interchange or condition within this discourse: always involving s(pp. 18-19, 35, 43)

To the surprise of some, perhaps, it emerges at the end of the report that "consensus has become an outmoded and suspectform that epistemic social acceptance now takes. What marks "good work" at present is fruitful antagonisms within the disinstability, is valued, where the best players in the game of 'knowledge' are always requesting that new rules be introduced
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(denotive) language games; and "The only legitimation that can make this kind of request admissible is that it will generate(p., 65 )2

It is very easy to recognize current university reality in Lyotard's report, and especially in its conclusion, where good workterms of novelty and antagonism. There is almost no limit to how far cleverness, careful arranging and chutzpah can take o

prepared to adjust our use of the term "knowledge" to conform to his implicit recommendation, we could then say that the

knowledge and knowing, for it is concerned to be a place where "discourse" of the type discussed by Lyotard goes on.

But we could not say that the university is now concerned with knowledge "as always." For knowledge in this sense of a sutraditionally what has been the focus of university life. In fact, what Lyotard describes is simply the social side of the life otoday, largely in a university setting. He does a quite adequate job of stating "what goes on." Many, perhaps most, do nowfunction of the university, not knowing or the preservation, extension and communication of knowledge. We have "researcknowledge." This latter phrase is not just quaint or strange, but is strongly repugnant. Knowledge talk leaves university peouneasiness nowadays. Knowledge finds itself dismissed with various platitudes, such as that what you 'learn' in school is ob"Knowledge" is suspect, slightly delusional. In any case it is conditional, transitory, temporal. But research is eternal. In thseems you could have research going on--possibly by "top" researchers--without involving knowledge at all, except under

This only confirms what I have just said, that university life is no longer organized around knowing and knowledge. If it wsubordinated to that, the academic scene would be very different from what it now is. Among other things, teaching would

position from what it has. But Lessing's statement, that if God stood before him and offered truth in one hand and pursuit o pursuit, expresses an attitude that has simply won in the university context. It has won with such force that it no longer reqexpressed. "Truth" sounds like dogmatism. It threatens self-expression, which is perhaps the primary right and value in con

(At dog races the dogs chase a device which simulates game to them, and which they never catch. They are judged successfinish line that has nothing to do with what they are chasing. They are unable to tell that what they are chasing is not what tdifference to the masters of the game--or to them. All that matters to the masters is how fast they are running in relation torunning against a clock.)

Now what is the knowing and knowledge around which, I am claiming, the university system is no longer organized? We sthis matter here, where, indeed, we step into an area fraught with genuine philosophical difficulties. But the idea of knowlealmost a millenium--the same idea which inspired both classical thought and the rise and development of modern science--

be able to think of things as they are, as distinct from how they only seem or are taken to be, and to be able to do so on an athought. To learn is to pass from a state of inability so to think of things to a corresponding state of ability. To inquire--or "knowing--is to try to learn or "find out" how things are in some determinate respect.

Now, all hairsplitting and hare-starting aside, anyone who has read the literature of Epistemology from Plato to Bertrand R concerned with knowledge in the sense just delineated, even where skeptical conclusions are reached. Moreover, if you speknowledge, and explain it in this manner, you will nearly always elicit immediate recognition--at least if they are far enougthat taught them that "No one knows nothin' nohow." In their lives they are constantly dealing with people who know and tthemselves--and they have a fair understanding of what this distinction is. (Of course university people do too, when not dedealing with their fringe benefits.)

Associated with this view of knowledge is the idea that there are bodies of knowledge, which are made up of a content anddiscipline upon those who would master them, learn them, and thus become knowledge-able in the respective fields. Geogr itself in a social and historical group of human beings and their cognitive products, is a body of knowledge about the earthTo master geography is not to 'master' this social group, but to master the body of knowledge for the sake of which and in sThe body of knowledge is a human achievement to be sure. All of the true propositions, the 'truths', that go into Geographyas a body of knowledge. They (or some significant subsection of them) must become known, and be in the possession of soof knowing relevant to them, before they constitute a body of knowledge or a discipline. But there is a level of content andremains the same and provides the field's continuity through often wide-ranging changes, extensions and transformations tEinsteinian physics, or from Euclid to analytic geometry and beyond. This in turn is anchored in the fact that knowledge, oknowledge of how things really are, as contrasted with how they seem or are taken to be.
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Thus, as indicated by the very term, a "discipline" imposes norms as to what "good work" in its domain must be. Good wor word!--to the discipline. For if it does not, it departs (on the traditional view) from the reality that is presented and dealt witknowledge; and the consequences for human life, which depends upon successful accomodation to how things really stand,worst disasterous. Such, I submit, is the picture of knowledge and reality that gave rise to "higher" education and nourished

And this brings us to the point where the "sense of crisis" that many feel when looking at the current university scene can p

"attack" on the university at present takes the form of the claim that there is something pervasively and totally wrong with twhich collectively make up the intellectual /artistic, and hence the academic, world.

This claim or attitude rests upon two sub-claims: First, that these "bodies of knowledge," and the practices based thereon, dcase cannot, represent or present what they purport to deal with "as it is, in distinction from how it seems or is taken to be."

business, is not governed by an independent reality; and "good work" and who gets the university (and resultant social) resomething outside the assignment process or distinct from the persons who manage the process .4 Second, that the pcontrolled, not even by the conscious self-interest or other motivations of individual administrators, publishers, colleagues,some part. What such people think they are doing is not necessarily what is happening at all, and in any case does not mucthe playthings of more encompassing powers, such as transcendental historicity, the dominant episteme, or some other per structure and dialectics have been big in the recent past, but less so now--that can only be discerned by something called "t

And this, of course, is where "those Frenchmen" come in. For they present themselves as, and are widely taken to be, mastREASONS REVEALED BY THEIR THEORY, there is something pervasively and totally 'wrong' with the traditional discnecessarily in the past, but certainly in the present--and with how they have been conceptualized as the basis for institutionexistence) in the Western world. This was the Marxist view, but it survives on the Rousseauism that has always been powethey know his name or not--and also was central to the Marxist vision .5

The main point where this all forcefully comes home in the current university setting is in the treatment of "texts." The unddisciplines seems at the popular level to open the way to saying that any reading of a text by anybody has a certain legitimvarious ways--or to saying that the reading of the text that is socially sustainable at present is the right one, as long as it is ssuch views to any of our Gallic theorists, but they certainly are held by people who claim to be influenced by them. And thteacher/student nexus is thick with such views, coming from both of its sides. This goes along with the view, commonly degood," or can be as good, as any other, since there is no objective ordering of texts as to their value, and no 'canon' other th

Now "texts" and the instrumentalities of their interpretation are the primary means through which humanity in its developeabout life and preserves its identity through time. Concern about how texts and the disciplines in which they are interwove

becomes a concern for those concrete forms of humanity (e.g. American society now) in which the university stands as theright to say how things are, and indirectly to determine what may or shall be done.

If these centers come under the control of those who hold such "open" views of the meanings of texts, what limits would thferment, might present itself as 'knowledge'? And knowledge always presents itself in human life as what ought to be confoto, in action. It is determinative of the boundaries of the obligatory and the permissable. If the texts are "open," what standdesire and will, either at the level of the individual, or in social institutions and practices? Will not, as Plato feared, the bellsubordination to the head? Will not brute force--call it 'reason' in society or history if you will--become what determines lacome to be managed by people who simply know how to get their way among a mass of those who no longer believe that ttexts and the traditional disciplines, determine how things are in nature, art or morality, regardless of how anyone wishes thauthority present them? Will not knowledge itself, as traditionally understood and looked to as the guide to life, simply be ldevalued as a bulwark against desire embodied in political and social objectives? Is this not happening now?

BASIC CAUSES OF THE DISPLACEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE AS TELOS OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSIT

What are the main causal factors back of the current crisis in higher education in the United States? I shall briefly considerinfluential, though several others will be mentioned in the process.

First there is egalitarianism, than which nothing is more dear to the American heart. As the idea that all people should receimoral ideal necessary for a good society and state. However, such equality is not what is commonly understood in the Ame
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exhalted. What is understood is that one person is just as good as another. In particular, I am just as good as you are--whoe

This deep set of American personality wells up spontaneously in the arts. James Dickey's epic poem, "Sermon," now in staaudience: "We should feel as free and correct as the animals feel. They may be penned up, but they strain toward sex wher freedom--freedom from male and religious dominance. We are whole and should treat ourselves accordingly. " 6 Th"women's issues," but about what people are just in virtue of being human. They are all equal and all wonderful and therefo

drive to be thought in no way deficient often takes amazing forms, such as a recent insistence that deafness be regarded, "nenhancement of vision."

But how does this effect the situation in American universities? In particular, how does it deflect away from knowing and k of higher learning? Very simply: by filling them with people to whom knowledge and knowing in themselves mean little oas just as good as anyone else and having a perfect right to occupy a university position nonetheless.

If we take the education system as a whole, from the early grades on, the most obvious thing about it is that most of the stuto learn or teach the disciplines, and in any case are not really engaged in doing so during most of their time. This then carr education, which has passed from being an opportunity for those who love and revere knowledge, art and scholarship to livwhich people who care nothing for such things must endure in order to achieve security, respectability and a pleasant life.who are present in the university are people who do not feel diminished by an almost total ignorance of mathematics, the hiliterature or art and its function in life, the ideas which have governed the great civilizations, or...you name it. This is becaufundamental value in its own right. They would never miss it but for extrinsic reasons.

Now equality in this vague but powerful social sense was "on paper" in America long before i t had any significant impact omainly because university training was seen, generally, as having little connection with money or success, and usually--as iregarded as a move in the opposite direction. It had a vague superiority about it, which was a kind of "consolation" prize fothat really matter in life. But this all begin to change rapidly when hundreds of thousands of GI's begin to flood into acadeGI Bill of Rights" (more precisely, "The Servicemen's Readjustment Act" of 1944).

Then, the government began to pour money into university research, in response to needs of the economy, industry and theof university property. The university became associated with vast amounts of money. In the 50s and 60s huge, totally new

previously frequented by rabbits. As space became available for masses of students for whom there previously was just nogovernment and government supported scholarships were abundantly provided. The challenges of the 60s to the university

predicated upon the presence in the universities of a huge mass of people who were not there for knowledge but for "oppor have been widely studied by now. College/university education was simply forced to become something of which all withgiven their interests and talents.

To say that "the mass,"--as Ortega y Gasset has studied it in his crucial book, The Revolt of the Masses ,7--has nowmajor causal factor in the crisis described above, is not to say that the students or faculty of the current university are either

believe them with very few exceptions to be just the opposite--though some of my acquaintances who are university adminthat they do not live for knowledge, knowing, learning, and teaching. We have to add that there is no reason why all peoplerelatively small percentage of humanity should. But American society 'tells' its citizens that the way to security, respect anand cites statistics that tie potential employment and income to the level of schooling attained. This forces masses of peoplknowing, but everything of 'research' and 'getting credits'. Then the call to displace knowledge and make other objectives--work place ("competing in world markets"), rectification of social structures, service to society, getting a good job or positieducation takes firm root in the minds of those for whom knowledge and knowing has little or no intrinsic value anyway.

A second major factor leading to the current state of the university in this country is empiricism. By this term I refer to thevalue to the sense perceptible, including the 'feelable'. Here, as with egalitarianism, we are not dealing with a philosophicalreality, historically developed and developing. Pitkim Sorokin's book, The Crisis of Our Age, is an indispensible resource f cultural reality.

Knowledge itself, and most of the things worth knowing, are not sense perceptible. This is well illustrated by the field of litreference to texts of all sorts. Literature is not sense perceptible--though of course one can see and touch books and pages.

powers and values interwoven with it, which is what literature as a field of knowledge really deals with. (It is hardly the ph


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correct, then what you 'feel' when you read a book or poem is the limit of its value. Admittedly, some theorists have toyedto me to come close to it, at least. But literature as a discipline, creative or interpretative, simply can't survive on such an apdiscipline can survive if you try to treat validity or implication in terms of the feelings arguments give to people, or try to tThere is just nothing left that will permit logic to be a field of knowledge, and a similar point must be made for literary stusciences .9 Very few of the things in which human life has a knowledge interest, and very few of the things studied in the ucomprehended, though most involve some element of the sense perceptible. And least of all, perhaps, are knowledge and k

So how can knowledge justify itself in the face of a society that is dominated by empiricism? It cannot. Thus we see once adisplaced as the Telos of the American university.

Empiricism has also adversely effected the status of knowledge in American culture by giving rise to a version of Represen-though it is not the only way in which such a theory of knowledge can arise. This version is also sometimes called "episteresponsible for the view that in consciousness of objects we never contact them but only our images or representations of tin his, held that all of the identities dealt with cognitively and practically in the world around us are products of our mind (in this general form, their philosophies come out at exactly the same result as Derrida's, though the arguments and explanatthe 20th Century on, "representations" became linguistic, on the Carnapian or the later Wittgensteinian model, and conscioactivity. The fact that two thousand years of close scrutiny of consciousness by some pretty bright people had not revealedto me that the shift to the linguisticization of consciousness was not driven by a deeper insight into consciousness, but by tthe physical, sense perceptible world, which words, sentences, and utterances arguably are. So today, as is well known, wh

is apart from us is not "inner" representations--"ideas," "images," "impressions,"--but the language(s) we speak as a part ofcrucial move for the current university situation. It allows a new dimension of attack upon knowledge as traditionally conc

become language, and this enables us to say such things as: "Theory, you know, is just another practice," which means justthere is thought to be no meta- or super-culture or language from which all other cultures can be comparatively judged. It iuniversity dogma today--that no culture can be judged superior to another. Here we see how 'empiricism' supports that posi

The final major causal factor which I shall mention here as leading to the current state of the university is the absolutizingunquestioned values or justifications for action in American culture. One is pleasure (which gets in under the empiricist wir what you want (which is also commonly regarded as 'feelable'). That something "feels good" or is "what you want to do" ar reasons for action. People are regarded as right and rational if they act upon them, unless there is some strongly countervail

be spelled out ultimately in terms of longer-run pleasure or freedom. So-called "natural" rights--which Bentham, with genuon stilts"--from time to time threaten this neat arrangement, but with little prospect of setting it aside in American culture,commonly invoked only to shore up the pursuit of pleasure and freedom.

Freedom absolutized exists culturally in a sort of free-floating equation with individualism ("doing your own thing," "beinwith egalitarianism. This complex of ideation and motivation arranges itself in opposition to authority, and opens the way tthe rebel and the sceptic. To question authority is a sign of intelligence and a sceptical pose can be made to pass for brillianearned through the attainment of knowledge.

Now knowledge, by contrast, is essentially the sort of thing that cannot be just any way you please. If you are to know yousubmit yourself to the relevant subject matter and methodologies. The recent popularity of books written against method, oMethod"--where truth is opposed, in a certain subtle but fundamental sense, to method--or of theories according to which tcertain cataclysmic leaps between incommensurable states of research history, is to be understood as a part of the drive to r knowledge and knowing with an anti-realist, social process view of knowledge. The attacks on Positivistic and falsely Objimportant points to make. But the widespread acceptance of the anti-method tendency is not, I think, based upon widespreaand reality, but upon "Representational" theories of knowledge plus that drive to absolutize will and freedom which constit

out of the Eighteenth Century, and which harmfully extends Individualism, deriving from the late Middle Ages.

Refusal to accept servitude to painful method is a reason why one of the most dismal aspects of university life in America imathematics and in languages. And just think of what vast possibilities in the way of knowledge and knowing is lost to theeverything worth doing is painful and undesirable in its early stages. On the bedrock foundation of egalitarianism, 'empirici"fun" part of languages and mathematics is more than most can manage.

Now, if I am right, egalitarianism, empiricism, and absolutized freedom, understood not as mere 'philosophical' views, butdeveloping historically and concretized in American society, are the three main factors leading to the displacement of kno


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substance or telos of the university system. Other things that currently play an important role in university life could be meimportance when compared to these three. For example, the influence of Pop Culture and 'art'. Or the removal of logic froreplaced by a strange amalgum called "critical thinking." Logic, of course, has something to say about what is essential towhat knowledge is without an understanding of logic. Yet you often find logic spoken of as in instrument of oppression todexact knowledge, where, as in mathematics, you either measure up or you don't. On the other hand, the talk of many logicstechnical philosophical circles and out, both has the effect of making logic seem arbitrary (which fits right into the scene, o

or invent 'logics' of their own, if they don't like the conclusions that are coming down on them. This makes it very easy to jof its conclusion to social demands rather than in terms of the validity and soundness of the process itself. ("Judged by whothis question were deep.)

The flight from logic leaves little recourse but to submit to "the best professional practice" in whatever academic field mayfaddishness that characterizes the social sciences and the humanities in particular, as this or that powerful personality or trean objective discipline is set aside, the no doubt necessary pattern of "inference to the best explanation" too easily allows tsocially or within the politics of the profession. Indeed, explanation itself may be given a social/historical interpretation.

WHAT IS DERRIDA ET. AL. TO ALL OF THIS?

So we and our universities exist in a society where what is widely taken to be best is cause of some of our worst problems.create a dominant mind-set in which a rich and socially powerful institution such as the university can hardly fail to be deflknowledge, and therefore is seen by many observers as threatened with the lost of its integrity. Now we turn to the question

phenomenon," as we might call it, is responsible for the threat. What I have said thus far surely makes it clear that I can accnot the end of the story. 'Deconstructionism' does exercise an influence, and it really is, in my opinion, in the direction fear more reasonable to think of the university crisis and the deconstruction phenomenon as joint effects of a common causatiocause of the other--though, once established, they may each significantly influence the other. To suppose that deconstructioare the cause of our problems in academia would be a severe misdiagnosis. They may exacerbate a pre-existing bad situatiothem, and if you got rid of them you would still have the problem.

Why should we not hold Derrida et. al. more responsible than this? There are, I believe, grounds other than the streams of sthem. Looking at the specifically philosophical interpretations of thought (language) and reality that occupied the AmericaHeidegger, Habermas, Derrida, etc., we find that Quine and Wilfrid Sellars alone are enough to make Derrida's announcemno "original" data or conceptualizations, no access to the "real stuff" apart from the shapings imparted by language, a little

philosophy has had no first rate philosopher who was a coherent realist since C. S. Peirce. Russell is the closest we have coidea that metaphysics (ontology) can only be a shadow cast by logic--which with other confusions (especially those about 'working out a view of the mind/object nexus that would accomodate knowledge in the sense explained above. In any case,on through Quine and Sellars, the views of knowledge arrived at really differ very little--especially in outcome--from whatrole of history, power, and mystical factors such as Derrida's "living present," are of less significance in the continuing AmPositivism and Ordinary Language Philosophy through American thought certainly did nothing to blunt its basically anti-re

So, in fact, the deconstructionist phenomenon adds little to American thought at the more austerely philosophical level of ashould not hold Derrida and company heavily responsible for the current academic tempest that often swirls around their nAmerican figures, in literature and other fields, who claim to be under their influence really do understand the basic elemensimply use Derrida and others as authorities within professional circles where their names carry weight.

Paul A. Bov, for example, has written a book called Destructive Poetics: Heidegger and Modern American Poetryinterpretation of the "present to hand," and the metaphysics of presence, Bov relentlessly goes after "reification," opposinlife and reality, of course). The closed structures of "the reifying West" once set aside, he then provides a interesting and so"free play" in the poetry of Whitman, Stevens and Charles Olson. His is a book well worth reading. But it simply starts fro

philosophy" that is not grounded in Heidegger's work or much of anything else, and it does not take account of the fact, whis much more of an essence philosopher than many of his hangers on would like. I really doubt that "the ongoing process owhich occurs in Heidegger's philosophical destruction" (p. 161) has much in common with the "openness" that Bov emph

A similar point is to be made with reference to Barbara Herrnstein Smith's widely influential book, Contingencies of Valuerediscovered variability in experiences of the same objects, and draws extreme relativist conclusions (especially about valuquite consistently declines to prove. But then she admits that she does "attempt to point the way quite energetically" only "


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any other way, she's glad for a bit of company." (pp. 183-184) That is the last sentence of her book. She's kidding! Of cour the book to help her get some company, nor would she be appointed, paid or promoted just to help her in that regard. In facdeconstructionist phenomenon in her profession, where it--and therefore her book--is regarded by influential people as corr experience and its objects. But she herself does not detail the logic by which discovered relativities have the implications sfundamental arguments and analyses of Derrida and others concerning language, consciousness and the world. He, along wModern and Contemporary thought, simply serves as a pretext by virtue of a system of authority that functions in her profe

Bov and Smith are among the more careful workers who take Heidegger and Derrida as authority figures. Christopher Nocamp followers," and rejects the idea that "'deconstruction' is synonymous with a handful of overworked catch-words ('textthe rest) whose promiscuous usage at the hands of literary critics bears no relation to the role they play in Derrida's work.""deconstruction differs so markedly from the work of neo-pragmatist adepts like Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish" preciselycoherence of ideas and his "refusal to accomodate 'current beliefs and practices'." (p. 139) Deconstruction properly understcanons of rigor in logic and methodology. So says Norris, whom I have chosen to quote because he represents the most maDerrida/Searle interchange.

Now I agree with the need to distance deconstruction from the excesses of the camp followers. That is a right which everytendency of thought must reserve to itself. But Norris does not do justice to the extent in which Derrida, intentionally or nodevotees (though he might never commit them) and justifies the continuing attacks of people like John Searle and John Ellirigorous and logical in his own analyses and writings. Norris can insist all he wishes on Derrida's allegiance to rigor, but, i

the determinancy of concept and proposition which it presupposes, is indelibly tarred with the brush of logocentrism by Delearn from Derrida (and Heidegger) it is that logocentrism just doesn't "get it." Logocentrism is precisely what is wrong witin the Western world. And if this is so, then as long as Derrida stays within logocentric boundaries he too isn't "getting it."that he is "getting it," we can assume that he is not operating within the confines of logic by any common conception.

And in fact he isn't. The many stylistic and personal devices he uses in his writing and speaking to cause the logocentric bo"shudder" and to establish movements and connections associated with terms such as "differance" and "trace" and so forth:least mainly so. If they are warranted (or not) in any epistemic sense, it is a sense that falls beyond logic. Norris speaks oftheir well-known encounter, was "activating latent or unlooked-for possibilities of sense which thus become the basis for athe less goes clean against the intentional or manifest drift of Searle's argument." (p. 143; cf. 151) ------- Well of course, latsense which are then made the basis (?) for "a scrupulously literal reading" that flatly contradicts the "manifest drift" of an

Norris nor any other rigorous deconstructionists have ever made any sense of this contrast between manifest and latent sensdeepest of metaphysical issues are involved. (What is it to be or not be part of or necessary adjunct to a sense--manifest or

senses? Etc.) Yet this is precisely the boundary between logocentrism and whatever else there is to thought and its objectiviyou move across the boundary and out of "mere" logocentric analysis. Derrida has never tamed this area in such a way thatin it and his critics could be satisfied that what he is doing is anything other than what the loosest "reader response" theoryallow.

What this all really comes down to, I think, is that "deconstruction" is not a method of thought. It is at best a set of claims ameanings. If you look at the most fundamental "result" in Derrida's corpus, the 'demonstration' (if that is a proper term) innonpresence and otherness are internal to presence, "13 you will find many claims (about the "primordial structure of repdefinitions ("ideality"), plays on words ("re-presentation"), and stories, e.g. about how the experience of voice gives an illusound argument, or even anything put forward as such, for Derrida's earth-shaking conclusion. And this in what Norris insimodern analytical philosophy, taking that description to extend well beyond its current, strangely narrowed professional sc

Derrida is a brilliant and fascinating individual who has been able to make a personal style look like cognitive substance in

knowledge in the traditional sense has already been socially displaced. But deconstruction is no method, any more than waarose and dominated philosophical thought in the Anglo-American countries for a few decades. The latter sustained itself owith Ryle and Austin as lesser lights. Recall the lengthy interchanges on the nature of logic between Strawson or Ryle, on tthe other. It sustained itself on personalities for a time. Long enough to weed out or permanently disqualify a large numberdidn't get "it," and to professionally lionize others who did. These latter went on to careers as "Ordinary Language Philosopsuddenly everyone realize that there was just nothing there to get. A large number of people had to spend the last decade orwhile they kept getting what was not there to get. Wittgenstein himself was buried, and later resurrected as an outstanding "

probably much happier.


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Something similar will happen with Derrida, though I predict a less substantial afterlife in his case. Wittgenstein was aftergreatest philosophical minds of this century. But Derrida only stepped into a pre-existing situation in the American academcreative powers would otherwise not have produced. We need to keep his effects distinct from the deeper- lying causes of tuniversity, and not try to rectify the latter by attacking him. We also need to try to keep younger scholars from tying their c

phenomenon, and to prevent colleagues and students from being black-balled because they do not get his "it" that in truth i present.

*

I should add in closing:

I am very happy to be a member of a university faculty, and I treasure my colleagues, students and administrators. I think itreadily come up with something I would like better or think of greater value.

Secondly, I have not tried to go deeply into particular points of philosophical analysis (especially of the mind /object nexuscrucial philosophical questions. This is regrettable, but otherwise it would have been impossible to cover the topics that I tconference for which these remarks were prepared.

Thirdly, I have spoken of the "unhinging" of the American mind in purposive contrast to Alan Bloom's idea of the "closinghave chosen "disarray." Such language seems more appropriate because the "closing" which Bloom discusses is seen by hithat he regards as the only accepted intellectual or artistic virtue of our age. Frankly, my experience leads me to think of thfloundering, and incapable of such resolution as he suggests.

NOTES

1. Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, translated by Geoff Bennington andUniversity of Minnesota Press, 1984, p. 3. Return to text.

2. The contrast between traditional and critical theory drawn by Max Horkheimer in his essay, "Traditional and CritiSelected Essays, translated by Matthew J. O'Connell and others, New York: The Seabury Press, 1972], is absolutein the university today. Contrast Husserl's account of theory, and his careful specification of its relationships to ps

Volume I of his Logical Investigations. Return to text. 3. Plato, Book Seven of The Republic, and J. H. Newman, University Subjects, New York: Houghton Mifflin Compeditions. Return to text.

4. See, for example, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory,Press, 1988. Return to text.

5. Conspiracy theories and views of the pervasive wrongness of society are frequent in the Enlightenment period. Re"the moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery begot upon pride." [Page 353 of Volume II of BritishIndianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1964.] On this whole issue of pervasive distortion see Selby-Bigge's "

6. Los Angeles Times, Calendar section, page F2, Jan 2, 1993. See also the piece by Robert J. Samuelson, "The Trop45. Return to text.

7. Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, New York: New American Library, 1950. First published in Spa8. See my paper "Space, Color, Sense Perception and the Epistemology of Logic," The Monist, 72, #1 (January 19899. See Husserl's penetrating comment, "On certain basic defects of empiricism," an "Appendix" to subsection 26 in

Investigations. Return to text. 10. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Revolt Against Dualism, La Salle, IL: The Open Court Publishing Co., 1960, Lecture I.11. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975, 1980. Return to text. 12. In his What's Wrong with Postmodernism: Critical Theory and the Ends of Philosophy, Baltimore: The Johns Hop13. P. 66 of Speech and Phenomena, translated by David B. Allison, Evanston, IL.: Northwestern University Press, 19
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Predication as Originary Violence:A Phenomenological Critique of Derrida's View of Intentionality

Appears in G. B. Madison, ed., Working Through Derrida, Evanston IL.: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1993, pp. 120-136.

What happens to intentionality in the thought of Jacques Derrida? When he is finished--when the terminological chain of dwith and marked off from that of "presence"--what has been made of that common state of affairs in which an "act" of consobject? What then are its components to be, and how are they related? For example, when I recall the first automobile I owmy next sabbatical leave, or savor the colors in a sunset sky? How does Derrida analyze that peculiar type of affinity betwe

and specifically correlated events (of the various possible types) which we often express by the prepositions "of" and "aboto him, of that ofness or aboutness which is characteristic of acts of consciousness? Especially, how does differance enter i

The fabled king Midas of Phrygia turned everything he touched, including his food, into gold. There is a long-standing tradwhich whatever objects present themselves to consciousness are the products of some more fundamental type of "touching"else. Our first thesis here is that Derrida falls squarely within this "Midas" tradition in the interpretation of intentionality: ain the modern period--possibly only Husserl, though the most common reading does not even exempt him--have managed tintentionality for Derrida really is a kind of making: a making that is always a re-making, thus moving all "objects"--the inthe realm of the ideal as he understands it, and simultaneously doing "violence" to that from which this `ideal' object of cothe produced object itself. Our second thesis will be that his view is descriptively false to the facts of consciousness, and dr

perhaps, ultimately, historical prejudices--which he not only never rationally supports, but which are in fact rationally insuinsistence.

Beginning with Bergson

The Midas tradition extends into obscure antiquity. Locke and Kant are the most obvious members of it from within the "of course, are highly instructive to study in clarifying its dynamics. But here we shall begin with Bergson, who, in truth, leEmmanuel Levinas has recently tried to remind us of the extent to which Bergson pre-empted the later critiques of technolwith his own form of "life" philosophy and his analysis of the relationship between concepts, language, history and dureehopeful philosopher. Perhaps there should be no serene philosophers in a world where, increasingly, only sour resentmentespecially toward the intellect, which had proven astonishingly inept at realizing the hopes of the Enlightenment for human

practically disappeared, though his substance continued to be of great historical effect in the work of people who might be

Now we find Bergson saying that:

"...what I see and hear of the outer world is purely and simply a selection made by my senses to serve as a light to my condtherefore, give me no more than a practical simplification of reality. In the vision they furnish me of myself and things, theobliterated, the resemblances that are useful to him are emphasized; ways are traced out for me in advance, along which mways which all mankind has trod before me. Things have been classified with a view to the use I can derive from them. Anmore clearly than the color and shape of things.... The individuality of things escapes us.... In short, we do not see the actuaconfine ourselves to reading the labels affixed to them.... The word...intervenes between it and ourselves....

"Not only external objects, but even our own mental states, are screened from us in their inmost, their personal aspects, in tonly the impersonal aspect of our feelings, that aspect which speech has set down once for all because it is almost the same,Thus, even in our own individual, individuality escapes our ken.... [W]e live in a zone midway between things and ourselv
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to ourselves. "2

Of course Bergson did concede that metaphysical "intuition" and the experience of art allow us, upon occasion, to get to ththe self, to "grasp something that has nothing in common with language, certain rhythms of life and breath that are closer tothe living law--varying with each individual--of his enthusiasm and despair, his hopes and regrets." (p. 154) Although theyknowledge, there still is some kind of "knowledge"--for Bergson as well as for the Existentialists and for Derrida himself--

"objectively" or "logocentrically.."

Sartre and the Touch

Sartre at one point gave great promise of escaping the Midas model, with some help from Husserl. In his brilliant little note`Phenomenologie' de Husserl, l'intentionnalite," which appeared in La nouvelle revue francaise for January of 1939, he def Brunschvicg, Lalande and Meyerson by describing how, for them,

"....the mental spider draws things into its web, covers them with a pale spittle, and slowly swallows them, turning them intstone, or a house? It is a certain assemblage of `contents of consciousness', a arrangement of those contents. An alimentarythe table the actual content of my perceptions? And is not my perception the present state of my consciousness?.... In vainamong us search for something solid, something which, at last, was not mental. Everywhere we were met only by a flabbyourselves!"

By contrast, Sartre notes,

"Husserl never ceased to assert that the thing cannot be dissolved into consciousness. You see, possibly, this tree here. Butthere where it is. --- Amidst the dust. Alone and withered in the heat. Twenty leagues from the Mediterranian coast. It coulit is not of the same nature as your consciousness. "3

But, alas! Hopes are only to be dashed. By the time we get to Being and Nothingness, if not earlier, the table, stone, tree, et"mental," now proves to be something that, through its necessary "world," is internally related to, and so could not exist wi"Nothingness"--and now we must also say the "differance"--that alone can explain the the possibility of a world--of a structup by interwoven "nots" or "lacks." (See "Part Two" of Being and Nothingness.) This is, today, a familiar story, and needsoffers us is that tables and trees are, at least, not parts of someone's mind. But, under such headings as the "noematic," the "

substance has nevertheless been transformed by `the Midas touch' of consciousness, generously interpreted, into somethingnot exist without "the mental spider"--now, however, a spider conceived in social/ historical/linguistic terms and inscribedHegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Saussure, Freud, Levi-Strauss, etc.

Exempting Husserl

When we turn to Derrida's writings, two significant points become very clear. One is that the overall view of the "world" oexpressed by Bergson and Sartre, according to which it is a product of human reality, is the one accepted by Derrida. Admisignificantly differs at certain points from that of his predecessors--including Heidegger, to whom he no doubt is closest. Bsays remains much the same as the views of Bergson and Sartre. We will come back to this claim below, to give it a basis i

The other point is that Derrida certainly believes that the view of the world and of the objects of science outlined above, acfundamentally "products" of Dasein, is also the view of Husserl. I shall not try to support this claim here, because I think aHusserl's Origin of Geometry : An Introduction and Speech and Phenomena will amply show it to be true. He believes thinterpretation of Husserl according to which the objects of consciousness are noemata .4 And I strongly agree that Hthe Midas touch only if he does not hold that objects of consciousness are, in general, noemata.

But in my opinion he did not hold that noemata are the objects of consciousness--and also did not equate the ideal with theTo the contrary, for him the usual objects of consciousness, whether real or ideal, are not noemata--though noemata can, ofconsciousness in special acts directed, precisely, upon them--and those "usual" objects would continue to exist and to be wdisappeared from the universe. Such objects, that is, as stars and galaxies, worms and algae, trees and stones, colors and sh"metaphysical correlate" of them, but these themselves as they may now be given to a veridical consciousness. And, for Hu
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2. Presence involves a certain self-containedness and discreteness that alone makes re-identification and identity posfrom ab-straction: a pulling-away-from, an ex-traction from the logocentrically ineffable and yet essential uniondiscourse, is different from, outside of, that which has presence.

3. This "ex-traction" to create "beings" (with lower case "b"), things "present" (the usual sorts of objects), is the wor language. These two linguistic functions constitute a `violence' to the "deeper" unification of beings where the arcreigns. It thus gives rise to trees, tables, persons (subjects), as well as to numbers and colors and virtues, etc. With

would not exist.4. Naming and predication are functions of language, and hence of "transcendental historicity," not of individual minonly results (in some sense) of naming and predication.

5. But while language and historicity are "more" than individual human beings, they do not produce beings apart fro

____________________

Hence: Ordinary objects, beings, things "present," are

after all the outcome of individual minds ("inhabited" by or "inhabiting" language and historicity, to be sure) touching (bei process and transforming "something" of "it" into trees, tables, persons, etc. Without such minds there would be no world oabove.

Derrida's System

To explain the reasoning back of this thesis we look more closely at Derrida's system. He has a system of thought. Not thatwith his standard qualifiers .5 And what he says about the limits of "system," as one link in the logocentric conceptual chai

be emphasized is that he does tell us how things essentially stand. His writings are full of synthetic apriori statements--e.g. be closed in upon itself, on the inside of its proper interiority, or on its coincidence with itself. The irreducibility of spacing"There cannot be a unique sign for a unique thing. "6 His claim that in certain areas we cannot, strictly, state essence is a essentially stand. This is not changed at all by his further claim that the "telling" of how things essentially stand must be doframework and causing it to "tremble" by showing that its constitutive contrasts--especially the one between presence andinhabit each other through the dynamism of differance and "trace." In this regard he is only one more in a long line of 19thhave held that the "real philosophical stuff" can only be shown and cannot be said.

Derrida's system is basically tripartite. It is strongly Kantian. Another close parallel would be Critical Realism as practicedcentury. In each case, the world of objects of science and common sense--including the individual self--is treated as a resul between factors of what there is. The three dimensions of the "system" are:

I. The realm of identifiable (re-identifiable) objects or beings, including the self, the Being of which is, according to be present or have presence, which is achievable only through the violence of predication. "There is no presence,"semiological differance... "7

II. The realm of differance, of a deferring and differing, of a movement that is neither active nor passive, that does nosomehow makes place for, identities capable of presence, objects of the everyday sort. (Margins, pp. 9-11) This isthe tain of the mirror which has no resemblance to the objects mirrored but makes it possible for them to be reflectthere is no name, essence or science .8

III. The interaction between the realm of beings and the realm of differance, as "the process of scission and divisiondifferent things or differences." (Margins, p. 9)

Naming and Predication as "Violence"

Here we are especially interested in the status of the world of ordinary objects or beings. They originate, as we have indicatstructure of violence is complex," Derrida holds,

"and its possibility--writing--is no less so....To name, to give names that it will on occasion be forbidden to pronounce, sucwhich consists in inscribing within a difference, in classifying, in suspending the vocative absolute. To think the unique wiis the gesture of the arche-writing: arche-violence, loss of the proper, of absolute proximity, of self-presence, in truth the lo
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self-presence which has never been given but only dreamed of and always already split, repeated, incapable of appearing todisappearance. "9

Proper names, indeed, never function except as "a designation of appurtenance and a linguistico-social classification." (Granames is a system of classification, expressed in predicates, through which things are designated in terms of their other, suclassification, and of the system of appelations." (p. 110) Within the organized meanings of a language, nothing ever just is

in the predicate or name is treated as just this. The mastery that comes from this making something to be present founds "arepetition that the eidos and ousia made available seems to acquire an absolute independence. Ideality and substantiality relres cogitans, by a movement of pure auto-affection. Consciousness is the experience of pure auto-affection." (Gramm pp. 9

Whatever is an object of linguistic meaning will, therefore, always be characteristically different from whatever is not an othe presence which makes it a being. And yet, as classified, it also bears the essential traces of its other within it--as the lettsystem of the alphabet, its relationships with the other letters. Thus, even "The thing itself is a sign." (Gramm p. 49) That is

present within it through the relationships implicit in its classification or kind. Thus: "From the moment that there is meanionly in signs." (p. 50) The signified which transcends the system of signifiers is an illusion. "Writing" he says, is "the imposignified that would not relaunch this signified, in that the signified is already in the position of the signifying substitution.

Two Crucial Clarifications

Yet the being that is given or taken as present is not, for Derrida, an illusion. In his interview with Kearney he responds vigdenies the existence of the subject, the person--and by implication of other "substances":

"I have never said that the subject should be dispensed with. Only that it should be deconstructed. To deconstruct the subjeThere are subjects, òperations' or èffects` of subjectivity. This is an incontrovertible fact. To acknowledge this does not msays it is. The subject is not some extra-linguistic substance or identity, some pure cogito of self-presence; it is always insctherefore, destroy the subject; it simply tries to resituate it. "11

This is a highly important statement for interpreting Derrida's views. The beings (whose Being is presence) really do exist- provides a clarification of what it is, in general, for something to be: of the difference between being and not-being. (The diBeing--the ontico-ontological difference-- gets all the attention and the difference between being and not-being gets lost.)are, even though without the violence which enables them, forces them, to have "presence" they would not exist.

This clarification goes hand in hand with another important statement to Kearny. Derrida emphatically rejects the view "threference," along with those critiques which see his "work as a declaration that there is nothing beyond language, that we asays, "the exact opposite. The critique of logocentrism is above all else the search for the òther'and the òther of language'.him) treat `Post-Structuralism' as the view "that there is nothing beyond language, that we are submerged in words--and ot

"deconstruction tries to show that the question of reference is much more complex and problematic than traditional theories beyond language and which summons language, is perhaps not a `referent' in the normal sense which linguists have attachethus..., does not amount to saying there is nothing beyond language." (p. 123-124)

These highly significant correctives to popular misunderstandings must be kept in mind. However, one must also be clear agives rise to such misunderstandings. It is his view that the usual sorts of objects, including and especially linguistic signs ttied to the kind of identity (re-identifiability, hence freedom from context, hence ideality) which they possess. That is, a Be

them, to have presence. And presence does not belong to anything apart from significations or concepts, which do not existin all of the deconstructive points about "inside/outside.") On the other hand, differance, trace, mark, etc. do not exist or haindicate the Being of what has presence. What is òutside' of language does not "exist"--even if in some sense (which Derricomprehensible) it "has Being." Accordingly it is hardly appropriate, though it is understandable, for him to refer to "stupidstupidity, and Derrida should accept his share of responsibility for the misunderstanding. Clearly, for him, the world of objfor language and its gathering and dissemination significations; for presence, the self-identity that gives logocentrism its postandard logic, mathematics, and the like, is a function of language--even of "writing" in the usual sense of that term. Whatoutside of, language (again, in the usual sense) can hardly be regarded as obvious.


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The Midas Touch Remains

Let us now grant to Derrida that language and meanings are not the inventions, are not produced or brought into being, by iworld are formed by a historical reality. Can Derrida, given this, escape the charge of subjectivism, of being in the "Midasdon't see how. Language and historicity do not obtain and have effects in their own right. Derrida more than most wants to

place." If individuals are at the disposal of language and history, owe their beingly Being to it, it is also true that language

through their insertion into individuals (or through insertion of individuals into them). The being and action of significatioWhile language and history are indifferent to any arbitrary individual subject, they are totally dependent upon the existenceConcepts and signs do not have a being apart from individual humans: one from where, irrespective of individuals, they miidentifiable object into that degree of presence (never complete or unadulterated with absence, of course) which allows it tothere to be oak trees in North America, for instance.

Language and significations require the existence of historically developing communities of communication. It is for the incommunities, not for language or history apart from them, that there is a world and that there are oak trees in North Americupon the individual subjects, though not on any one of them in particular. This is not lessened by the fact that the subjectsthat has developed historically. And it does not really help, I think, to point out that to raise the question about individual s

back into the oppositional structures of logocentrism (or of "metaphysics" or even "philosophy," in Derrida's special sense).remains that language is powerless to structure objects except through the actions of individuals. Contact with individual m

beings. Of course the minds are beings too--but then nothing is every just what it is for Derrida.

The Intentional Nexus in Deconstruction

These remarks bring to light the fact that Derrida really has no account at all of how language (conceptual systems) and theobjects present to or through them. In this he is like the anti-psychologistic logicians of the early and mid-20th century, whmental events so far that they could not longer explain how logic could serve in the critique of actual thought and discourseempiricism and platonism. He tries to do this by introducing senses (concepts, essences, significations) which provide a moabsolute beginning or end. But this is where the properly phenomenological critique of his views begins to take hold. For tof how sense history enters into the individual mind or minds at a given time to yield the correlative world of beings--incluapparently, not even intended to operate at that level of analysis. The result is that in fleeing from origins, transcendental sino positive analysis of intentionality: of the grounds (in the act and in the object) of the intentional grasp of the object by thlogocentric account of this nexus cannot be wholly correct, it does not follow that no account is available or required.

Instead of doing the canonical phenomenological labor of examining particular cases where an act of a certain type is direcwith general argumentations derived from selected associations of certain terms. The basic term examined is, of course, "re

be understood "in the sense of re-presentation, as repetition or reproduction of presentation, as the Vergegenwaertigung whGegenwaertigung. And it can be understood as what takes the place of, what occupies the place of, another Vorstellung (R Stellvertreter). "15 Thus the specific phenomenon of intentionality (ofness, aboutness) is ignored in favor of what Derrida wirepetition (being the "same" as, though not merely "identical" with) and replacement.

But now a few questions must be asked. First, do we not know that the affinity which my present perception has with this cupon it, is not a matter of the latter (or the former) being a repetition of and/or replacement for the former (or the latter). Is

part of my perception or that perception as a whole repeats or replaces the screen? Can any of Derrida's points about differ it assist my act to be about the screen if part of it did repeat of replace the screen or conversely? After all, `repeating' and `r they do not involve the repeated or replaced standing in the intentional nexus with what repeats or replaces it. Just as, contr similarity is too general a trait to use as an analysis of "ofness" or representation, so with differance.

One sees evidence in many of Derrida's statements that he has simply lost the sense of basic semantical and intentionalisticwell-known theses is that "even within so-called phonetic writing, the `graphic' signifier refers to the phoneme through a wlike all signifiers, to other written and oral signifiers, within a `total' system open, let us say, to all possible investments ofgraphic signifer does not refer to the phoneme at all. It is not of or about or intentionally directed upon it. It has some sort oDerrida says about differance casts some light upon that relationship. But to speak of "reference" here is simply to depriveanalysis. A similar point is to be made for the claim that the signified always becomes a sign because an absence always instructures of Derrida are found just about everywhere, so far as I can tell. But intentionality, the affinity of a given act or sitype of union which, on the whole, appears to be pretty rare in the universe. We have to consider the possibility that, distra


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insights into differance, Derrida has yet to discover or discuss intentionality. A general point about sameness (namely, that"identity," but always "deconstructs" to exhibit "otherness," always necessarily involves difference, when examined with cBradley and many others like him taught us?) cannot be turned into a philosophical account of practically everything, evenabout Western culture and history.

Voice and Consciousness

Derrida's discussion of voice and consciousness--an indispensable cornerstone of his entire system--shows the same pheno"Why," he asks, "is the epoch of the phone also the epoch of being in the form of presence, that is, of ideality?" (SP p. 74)that does not impair the presence and self-presence of the acts that aim at" the (always ideal) signified. (pp. 75-76) "The id

being-for a nonempirical consciousness, can only be expressed in an element whose phenomenality does not have a worldlthey seem not to leave me: not to fall outside me, outside my breath, at a visible distance...." (p. 76)

"The `apparent transcendence' of the voice thus results from the fact that the signified, which is always ideal by essence, th present in the act of expression. This immediate presence results from the fact that the phenomenological `body' of the signmoment it is produced; it seems already to belong to the element of ideality. It phenomenologically reduces itself, transfor

pure diaphaneity." (p. 77)

Thus, "the signifier, animated by my breath and by the meaning-intention...is in absolute proximity to me. The living act...sfrom its own self-presence." (p. 77) Thus it becomes paradigmatic of beings (with small "b"). "The subject can hear or spesignifer he produces, without passing through an external detour, the world, the sphere of what is not `his own'. Every othethrough what is outside the sphere of `ownness'...." (78) This leads Derrida to hold that "de jure and by virtue of its structur the voice. The voice is the being which is present to itself in the form of universality, as con-sciousness; the voice is consci

Now we must note, to begin with, that Derrida here does not trouble himself to describe in detail a specific case of the expevon oben, with the general claim that an object is ideal and so can only be expressed--we are never told why--by "an elemereal or worldly existence. His next claim is that my speech, my spoken words, seem not to leave me and take on separate esignified to be (to seem?) immediately present in the act of expression, thus giving the act the type of undivided self-identitallowing the immediate presence of the signified in the act of expression.

But let us look at some facts. Speech, my words, in soliloquy or in colloquy, are sounds experienced as located in my speci

is great danger of war in the Middle East, the words used are experienced as sounds moving in and from my chest and thro phenomenological test.) When things are in good working order, speaking may be relatively effortless, but it is never a casanyone learning to speak a new language (to make the unaccustomed sounds with their bodily parts) or suffering from a go

The crucial difference between spoken and written symbolism has nothing to do with "proximity," but with the fact that spconsists in continuants or substances which are the results of events. Spoken words do not become "diaphanous." In the maexist after an appropriate temporal elongation, which is very different from becoming diaphanous. But they no more have aexpression than, for example, the movements of the fingers in the sign language of the deaf, which utilizes space and not so

Once these matters are clear from the descriptive analysis of actual speaking, we will then understand that to say that no coto say something obviously false. Consciousness constantly and mainly occurs without corresponding speech. Hence, consThis, as a matter of historical fact, is a point upon which all of the great philosophers through the centuries (Plato, DescarteHusserl, agreed. Perhaps because simple description of the details of specific events in our conscious life will show it to be

reversal on this point is another matter.) And if to claim that voice is consciousness, that no consciousness is possible withobviously false, it is to use the word "voice" in a way that has nothing to do with actual speech or language. As, for examplconsciousness--where, so far as I can tell, speech or `voice' is (falsely) assigned the absolute self-presence often said to be tinstead of an honest reference to language, a cosmic principle of the most obscure nature (differance, "writing") is invoked.

So it emerges, in my opinion, that Derrida does not really have a view of the specific phenomenon of intentionality or mearespects, his reflections on differance cast no light on how language (name, predicate) works through individual minds to acorresponding "objects." They also provide no understanding of wherein consists that peculiar affinity or selectivity of the


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referent, that we call "intentionality." It is not so much that his account is wrong as that it really is no account at all of these

NOTES

1. A quoi pensent les philosophes, edited by Jacques Message, Joel Roman and Etienne Tassin, (Paris: Autrement R 2. Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, translated by C. Brereton and F. Rothwell, (Ne

151ff. Return to text. 3. Translated by Joseph P. Fell in the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, I, 1970, pp. 4-5. Re4. Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, translated by Alan Bass, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978),

Return to text. 5. Jacques Derrida, Positions, translated by Alan Bass, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 3. {Hereafte6. Positions, p. 94, and Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Spivak, (Baltimore: The Johns Ho

{Hereafter referred to as "Gramm".} Return to text. 7. Positions, p. 28; cf. Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, translated by Alan Bass, (Chicago: University of Chi

referred to as "Margins".} Return to text. 8. Gramm pp. 49 & 93; cf. Rodolphe Gasche, The Tain of the Mirror, (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 19. Gramm p. 112; WD pp. 147-149. Return to text. 10. Positions p. 82; cf. WD p. 25. Return to text. 11. Richard Kearney, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: The Phenomenological Heritage, (Manche

1984), p. 125. Cf. Positions p. 88. Return to text. 12. Kearney, p. 123. Cf. Ynhui Park, "Derrida ou la prison du language," Philosophy, (Seoul, Korea), 1983, pp. 151-113. Gramm p. 167, Margins 21-25 Return to text. 14. Discussed in my Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge, (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1984), Chapter I15. Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 49. {Hereafter refe
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Is Derrida's View of Ideal Being Rationally Defensible?

"Certainly, there be that delight in giddiness; and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting freewill in thinking as well as philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be nthose of the ancients."

(Of Truth, Francis Bacon)

"Promise me that all you say is true. That's all I ask of you."

(Phantom of the Opera)

In this paper I shall inquire to what extent there may be good reasons for holding (or rejecting) Derrida's view on the existeuniversals. That is, is his view true or is it false? And are there considerations which can be stated in the form of propositioknown to be true and that logically entail, or render significantly probable, either the view of ideal being which Derrida mathe results of an appraisal of Derrida's position on this matter from the viewpoint of standard logic? I share Newton Garver'left himself any ground on which to stand and may be enticing us along a path to nowhere.... " 1

I do not mean to suggest that this is the only interesting question which might be raised about his views--on ideal being orcould be some justification for asserting what he asserts on various topics even if his assertions were not rationally defensimust be of some interest to him, as well as to others, if we were to find that his views were not rationally defensible in the sthinking that to establish the rational indefensibility of his views on ideal being must have a significant effect on whatever

philosophical discourse, of life and of history.

I am aware that "standard logic" does not by any means coincide with "rationality." Yet it seems to me that a position whicsignificantly failed with regard to rationality, and that whatever aspirations it may have to be rational would then face a ver could be rational if, after careful examination, it doesn't have a logical leg to stand on, and especially if it turns out to be lo

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What, exactly, is Derrida's position on the existence and nature of ideal beings or universals? I should the outset express mor universals to exist and to have a specific nature, and that his view is, with relatively minor deviations, the view which, inhe attributes to Edmund Husserl. Many of his readers will disagree with me about this, and it may be possible later on to sehave to be determined by what they say. Let us see what Derrida says.

To begin with, which are the ideal beings according to Derrida? He would, I believe, accept the re-identifiable correspondenames as ideal beings. In terms of consciousness, any ob-ject of consciousness: anything singled out as an identity for the f

being, precisely because of its repeatability in identity. The main element in "identity" for Derrida is reidentifiability, not sconstitutes identity regardless of consciousness and language. (Similarly as Quine, in his slogan, "No entity without identitcriteria of identification, hence to re-identifiability, and not to some metaphysical "fact about" entities in themselves--whicinvolving cross-references to the same object, and not nouns, bear existential commitment for him.)

A consequence of this general description of ideal beings for Derrida is that what are commonly regarded as individuals, as
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turn out to be ideal beings. Indeed he embraces the view that "The ideal object is the absolute model for any object whatevSP 99 )2 This will not be surprising to anyone who has read her Bradley or Quine well, and perceives the profound kinshipthese three thinkers. However, in this paper we shall not pursue issues concerning individuals and their ideality. Rather weclassically understood to be universal, and with their being and ideality.

Cases of ideal being in this narrower sense will surely include the ones discussed in his first major publication, his lengthy

of Husserl's L'origine de la geometrie. These are the properties and relations dealt with in geometry, such as point, line, plaintersection, triangle, and so forth. His discussions also suggest that numbers and their properties and relationships fall amodoubt from his later writings that non-mathematical properties and relations of all sorts, which can be singled out and asser fall among ideal beings in the narrower sense of universals. Properties such as red, vanilla, difficult, oviparous, and so fortcharacteristic ways among themselves as well as from mathematical properties.

A very special class among universal ideal beings, for Derrida, is constituted by meanings, significations, or senses. At thisquestion of how significations or senses are related to universal ideal beings which are not significations: whether the signi

being which it is 'of', whether there are any ideal beings which aren't significations or senses, and so forth. For now it su ffi property of a certain figure or thing), and the sense, signification or concept of triangularity (as a determination or componconsciousness), are ideal beings on Derrida's view.

With this indication of what ideal beings are in extension, let us now turn to some of Derrida's essential characterizations oof what it is for a being to be ideal.

1. Ideal objects do not exist in self-contained completeness in a topos ouranios. (OG 75, SP 6, WD 157-158 )3

2. Ideal objects are "free," and therefore can be normative, with regard to all "factual subjectivity." That is, the cessation ofnot destroy them, for they can be cognized in other, perhaps infinitely repeated, acts, which also can be criticized in termsmust be developed in terms of what those objects are. (WD 158)

3. 1 and 2 imply that ideal objects derive from "a transcendental subjectivity," that is, a mind-like producing and reproducinot any particular mind, but expresses itself through particular minds. (WD 158, SP 82)

4. It also follows that ideal objects are essentially and intrinsically historical. (WD 158, SP 85)

5. Ideal entities are essentially and only objects of consciousness. They depend for their existence or being upon being cogideal....is only what it appears to be....is already reduced...and its being is, from the outset, to be an object for a pure consciin general is here determined as object: as something that is accessible and available in general and first for a regard or gazobject is to put it at the permanent disposition of a pure gaze." (OG 78) "Ideality...does not exist in the world and does not

6. The being of ideal entities (universal or particular) is presence: "...the absolute proximity of self-identity, the being-in-fr the maintenance of the temporal present, whose ideal form is the self-presence of transcendental life, whose ideal identity99; cf. 6) By contrast, differance is the mark of the non-ideal. Differance does not exist (MP 21 )4 and has no essenc25)5

7. The origin of an ideal object "will always be the possible repetition of a productive act." (SP 6) The ideal object "dependrepetition. It is constituted by this possibility." (SP 52)

8. Repeatability of the ideal is possible "...in the identity of its presence because of the very fact that it does not exist, is not being a fiction, but in another sense,...whose possibility will permit us to speak of nonreality and essential necessity, the nogeneral the non-worldly." (SP 6; cf 55 & 74-75)

9. Language is the medium in which transcendental subjectivity produces objects, ideal objects, senses. (SP 73-75 & 80) "Ito unify life and ideality." (SP 10) Without language there would be no ideal beings.
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10. Absolute objectivity, repeatability in its highest degree, is only achieved in the written language and symbolisms of sci

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To provide a contrast with the above, we consider Edmund Husserl's views on being and ideal being. This is especially impnow regard the view of being and ideality expressed in the previous paragraphs as Husserl's view. But for Husserl, to existsame thing) is simply to possess qualities or relations. In the case of specific types of beings, certain qualitative structuresfor beings of those types to exist, or for things which exist to be things of those types. Such qualitative structures are the esconsidered from the standpoint of how the entities are to be given if "they themselves" are present, they determine the 'Sinentities. (Ideas I, subsection 142 [p. 396] )6 But what it is for them to be, the being of such beings, is the same in every caontological chasms, including the real and ideal, the reelle and the i

willard on derrida

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